The apoplectic "bin tax" ranters are back. The reason? The government's announcement this week that residents in proposed eco-towns might have their bins weighed (shock!), their collections reduced in frequency (horror!) or – and this is truly the end of civilization as we know it – additional charges levied for disposing of large amounts of unrecyclable waste (the wickedness!).

The frothy-mouthed ranks of rabid ranters in the Telegraph and Daily Express have paused momentarily from their cacophonous chorus of 'broken Britain', and turned their wild-eyed gazes on to the "stealth tax" bandwagon so beloved of the loopy right-wing.

Which got me thinking. Why is waste disposal so utterly different in people's minds to other services? We don't expect to pay a flat price for energy whether we're running a small, domestic aluminium smelting works or living in a solar powered shed, yet somehow we've got it into our heads that it's a fundamental right to dispose of as much crap as we want, and woe betide anyone who tries to stem the flow.

I've always thought it strange that people get so worked up about this when in fact they're actually already paying for a lot of this rubbish many times over. Much of the blame lies higher up the chain. We buy stuff at the supermarket packaged in unnecessary sleeving and wrapping we neither want nor need but are still paying for, then we cart it home and have to pay the council to take it away again.

The right-wing media language that describes these proposals is hysterical. "Bin taxes", "Town hall bin bullies", "sneaking in" policy and accusations of "snooping" and "meddling" feature prominently when describing any new initiative to tackle our prodigious generation of waste. Council waste managers are painted as dastardly villains intent on invasive surveillance and skullduggery, threatening the very fabric and freedoms of modern life. Meanwhile the real vandals of liberty – the CCTV and security industries – warrant nary a mention.

We all seem to forget the classic old hierarchy of "Avoid. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle", where recycling is the option of last resort and the avoidance and reduction of waste upfront is actually the most effective and sensible thing to do. But that doesn't get the fighting blood boiling, does it? Far better to rage about reductions in the size of bins, frequency of collections and the systematic undermining of that Great British tradition of unrestrained rubbish production.

So how about we reframe the debate? The whole idea of introducing financial disincentives (sorry "bin fines") is that by changing your behaviour you can avoid them. They're not the subversive revenue-generating mechanism they're made out to be if people are prepared to change.

Better still might be to position the whole environmental behaviour change agenda as green tax evasion. That might get the Daily Mail a bit more excited about it. Maybe I should set up a special "green tax accountancy" service that, rather than helping clients squirrel cash offshore, advises them on how they can maybe make a few changes in their lives and avoid green "taxes" altogether? As long as my advice wasn't to burn it or fly-tip it, I think I might be on to something ...